Feeling ok-ish today even though I was in Breda, downing a reasonable amount of wine for a Wednesday night, straight out of work, until about eleven thirty. I was there at the "Fighting Humor" evening which featured, amongst others, Probeersel.com cartoonist Argibald, slightly more famous cartoonist Djanko, Tilburger Jeroen de Leijer (in the Netherlands well-known by now from Eefje Wentelteefje), and a former classmate of mine who appears to have moved on to near-fame and about to make a transition into fame as a cabaretier (Dutch genre which is sort of a stand-up comedy / folksinging / performance art mixture). In other words, I had a good time, and it was time well-spent, but honestly, to have to get up early again the next day (not to mention to perform some webmaster duties after that, in the middle of the night), and to work for 9 hours that day, is a major pain in the neck. I hereby vow to try to avoid events that fall in the working week area. Sorry, folks - just try to organize your event on evenings that allow me to sleep in the next day, instead, please.
Anyway, that explains I'm a bit sluggish today. So here we go, I have another four nominees for the Word of the Day. All four, again, thanks to the free newspaper Spits.
- 'Please-complex'. This came from an interview with some artist, who was complaining that artists (dubbed 'everyone', because in their world, 'everyone' is a famous artist of course) are so eager to please everyone. He seems to suggest that this is a pathological deficiency that requires psychiatric treatment. Regardless of wether or not he has a point, the word is a clear nominee. And I don't care whether you agree with me on that, because I don't suffer from a Please-complex. So ef you.
- Kaalheidscomputer. There is a German site where men can have their probability rating calculated for baldness. The 'program' (probably just scripts) that does the calculating was dubbed 'kaalheidscomputer' in the article, baldness computer. Albeit that this is the most correct usage of the word 'computer' in over a decade, I doubt it's a term that will enter common language and the introduction of it as a whole word is completely pointless. It's not like people will be discussing this phenomenon for so long and so often that it needs its own label. Kaalheidscomputer is the perfect example of a word that needn't be introduced.
- Tsunamidoden. Here's a word that you never heard before until a couple of weeks ago. We all, by now, are painfully aware of what a tsunami is, and really, in most of our minds there is only one: the one that has been so widely broadcast. God forbid there'd be another one in the near future, we wouldn't know which tsunami we would be referring to when we discuss 'THE tsunami'. There'd be a First Tsunami and a Second Tsunami. Or a First World Tsunami and a second one, I dunno. In any case, where you would normally talk about 'casualities from a (the ?) tsunami', apparently now it's necessary to introduce the word 'tsunamideaths'. People who have died from the recent tsunami. THAT's what we're talking about, folks. But the media do love their labels, so nominee number three is the beautiful, beautiful word 'tsunamidoden'.
- Lichtoverlast. This one made me laugh. There has been some ridiculous research (god, there are so many of them ! Are there so many researchers around that we really need to waste their time with this crap ?) or questionnaire which turned out that a lot of my countrymen wouldn't mind if the streetlights, car lights, and other electronic lights, would be turned off or down a lot at night. Especially car lights are a major nuisance - I can't say I like car lights at night all that much, but to actually introduce a word that calls it 'light nuisance' really seems way over the top. The fourth nominee for the day, by good right.
And the winner is... without a doubt, Tsunamidoden. I mean, there isn't even a dash in between tsunami and doden, folks ! Once the media noise about the disaster dies down and everyone's forgotten about it, do you realise how long it will take before another tsunami ever hits a shore again ? Will you really use this word again in your lifetime ?
René out.
No comments:
Post a Comment